What’s up, readers!??
Pittsburgh metal. Good stuff. FREE. Read about it, download it. You won’t regret it, and I won’t stop bugging you until you do it. Seriously.
A whole bunch of the bands who have songs on that comp are playing shows this weekend, along with a whole bunch of other bands. If you’re in the Pittsburgh region over the next couple days, you’ll want to pay attention because here’s your guide to what awesomeness you might have missed if I wasn’t here to help you out!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past nine months, or have never ever seen a post on this blog before, chances are you’ve heard me talking about the Iron Atrocity project. This is purely a labor of love by the wonderful folks who run the Innervenus Music Collective, and designed as a showcase for the array of high-quality metal (and other related music) we’ve got here in the Pittsburgh area.
It’s been a long time coming, and there have been many trials and tribulations along the way, but the second edition of this compendium of local talent has been completed! Just like volume 1, this new collection will be handed out for free by Innervenus-related bands at shows and other events (beginning with the Iron Atrocity Vol.2 release show, which is scheduled for Friday 03 August 2012), but also just like its predecessor, the compilation can be downloaded for free — and it’s available right now!
The new CD has assembled tracks — some newly recorded, exclusively for the compilation, some taken from recent releases — from sixteen different local bands, all of whom have been mentioned on this website in some form or fashion, at one time or another. Nevertheless, I’ll give you the full rundown on all the songs, about an hour and a quarter in all, that will be yours FREE when you grab this download. All you need to do in return is listen and enjoy, spread the word, and whenever possible, show your support by heading out to some shows (or buying some merchandise)!
Good afternoon! For those who will be in or around the local area this weekend, the Valley of Steel blog is proud to present you with: What To Do In Pittsburgh This Weekend!
Once again, there is a TON of stuff going on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, and I’ve collected as many events here as I could! (But once again, I’m only human, and if you know about anything else that’s happening, either this week or anytime in the future, please be sure to let me know!)
Hello again, readers. To paraphrase a certain local musician’s recent post on Facebook, there are like 8,000 killer shows taking place right here in Pittsburgh this month! It seemed like about half of those were taking place last weekend (see here for a summary of those), but there are tons more going on this week too! Some big names, and some not-so-big but who have been talked about frequently on this very blog… details below.
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Hello, readers! How are you? I think I’ve officially recovered from the holiday weekend and am ready to get back into the swing of posting updates. Did you have a nice Easter? I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Ghost, since I finally got around to picking up Opus Eponymous on CD almost two weeks ago. I like it a lot, but I’ve kind of got a funny feeling about it. I haven’t tried slowing it down or playing it backwards or anything, but I get the impression that there might be some kind of hidden evil messages or something. Oh well. Hey, speaking of which, they’ll be coming to town in just a few more days! In fact, they’re just one of a whole slew of awesome bands playing in Pittsburgh over the coming weekend. Just keep on reading for all the details on this show and tons more.
This post goes out to anyone who will be in or around the Pittsburgh area this weekend and can’t find anything to do: GET YOUR ASS OUT TO SOME SHOWS, because there are some awesome ones happening all three nights!! Check out the details below, and get excited!
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at The Smiling Moose bar on the South Side
1306 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Friday, 30 March 2012 – doors open at 9:00, show runs until 1:30am
21+ only, $5 per person (suggested minimum donation)
For more details, see the Facebook event page.
You’ve seen me talking about Iron Atrocity, the free compilation of the Pittsburgh metal scene many times before, and for good reason. There’s lots of great stuff on the first volume (don’t belive me? Download it here!), and there promises to be just as much awesomeness when the second one rolls around.
Innervenus, the local record label and music collective responsible for assembling this compilation, held a Kickstarter fundraising campaign recently to help finance the production of the CD. That was mostly successful — at least, enough pledges were made to cover about two-thirds of their target, while the Innervenus staff ended up supplementing the remainder out of their own pockets.
Well, some nice folks decided to throw together another benefit show to help offset some of those costs, and that show is happening this Friday night.
The Smiling Moose Facebook
Iron Atrocity Facebook
Innervenus Facebook, Website
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If that isn’t already too much excitement for you to handle, there’s plenty more on the way…
I’d to apologize to you in advance for the following review, because what I am about to bring to your attention is going to seriously fuck up the rest of your day.
Today marks the official release of Oblivious to Ruin, the debut LP from “Steel City Sludge” purveyors Vulture. These Pittsburgh natives have been around for a few years now — they had previously recorded a self-titled EP at the end of 2008 with a different singer (this was recorded in Virginia with the assistance of Gwar‘s late guitarist Cory Smoot). The following year, though, they swapped for new frontman Justin Erb, and soon started working on new material.
The first material anyone heard out of this revised line-up was the track they recorded in early 2011, exclusively for the Iron Atrocity Vol. 1 compilation: “Prick of Misery” . That song was definitely one of the highlights from that collection, so of course I was excited not long after that when I learned Vulture had teamed up with Innervenus to put together a full-length album.
The band returned to the same studio in Akron, Ohio, where “Prick” had been recorded, and once again they worked with Complete Failure‘s James Curl. After hammering away at it through August and October 2011, Oblivious to Ruin is now ready to be unleashed upon a thoroughly unsuspecting public.
Ladies and Gentlemen, one last time I am bringing this to your attention, because this fine organization who is so instrumental in supporting great local music could really use some support from all of you right now.
There is now less than one day remaining in this fundraising campaign. If you have been waiting until the last minute, THIS IS IT. Don’t put it off until tomorrow (Friday), because the deadline is 5am tomorrow morning. As of the time I am posting this, they have only raised approximately HALF of their original goal. That leaves less than twenty-four hours to make up the other half!
For those unfamiliar with exactly how Kickstarter works, you don’t need to worry if maybe you don’t get paid until tomorrow and you’ve been trying to wait until then to send in your donation. This is just a pledge, you aren’t paying anything yet, until after the deadline has passed.
Note: If the pledge drive doesn’t meet its goal before the deadline, it will fail, no money will change hands at all, and the terrorists will have won. We can’t let that happen.
So get to clicking: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/240758996/iron-atrocity-v2, and show your support for local music. Please, if you have anything to spare — $10, $5, even $1 — it all adds up. But do it now, there is no more time to put it off any longer.
Thank you.
—Valley of Steel
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(previously posted on 15 February, 2012):
You might remember I talked about this project before — back in November I posted about some upcoming Molasses Barge shows which included a benefit show in Decmeber to support the Iron Atrocity v.2 compilation.
If you don’t remember, Iron Atrocity is a digital download (available free by visiting www.ironatrocity.com) or CD compilation (I do not know if any copies are still available, but it was given out for free at shows associated with Innervenus or any of the bands on the CD) which highlights some of the best in Pittsburgh-area metal music today.
Well, the second compilation in the series is currently in the works, and the folks at Innervenus are trying to raise a little extra capital to get this thing off the ground…
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Hey! What are you doing tonight? If you are anywhere within driving distance of the Southside of Pittsburgh today, cancel those plans now. You are going to need to get yourself down to The Smiling Moose bar, where they are throwing a CD release party you will absolutely not want to miss. More details on that later; first let’s talk about this relatively new (founded in 2009) local band Invader and why you’ll definitely want to check out their self-titled album that has just been released by Innervenus.
Invader first came to my attention when their song “Plow City U.S.A.” was included on the Pittsburgh-area metal compilation Iron Atrocity v.1 (I can’t imagine any reason why you wouldn’t have a copy of it yet, since it’s awesome, and also free to download, but JUST IN CASE, you can grab it from here). Then, I saw word around town that the band was putting a new record out this week; the official press release had two main points that really caught my eye: first, it listed similar artists “Nicki Minaj, Lady GaGa and The Grateful Dead,” and went on to say the five members of the band’s “goal is to play music that they themselves wanted to hear.” Now, clearly that first part was a joke, but I did really appreciate the second quotation, because too often people just try to latch onto whatever current trend is out there, instead of playing what is genuine, and I think it really manifests in the sound a band produces.
Hey readers, how’s it going? Me, I’ve been pretty busy. Between working full-time, running a music blog of skyrocketing popularity, and taking online classes half-time, sometimes it can be a lot to juggle. Like today, when usually I’d be working on blog stuff while pretending to work, I had a bunch of school stuff that needed done instead. So that means for the majority of the day I ended up neglecting my duties here.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I forgot about you, or that I wasn’t busy finding new things to write about. I’ve always got something to listen to throughout the day, and today was no exception. And as luck would have it, on a day when I found myself without a whole lot of time to write, I came across something to share with you that hardly takes up any time at all: a two-song release that runs a mere six minutes.
Of course, just being short isn’t enough to make me want to recommend something to you. I wouldn’t want to waste any of your time, even if it’s only a little bit, with something shitty. Well, no need to worry about that. What I’ve got here is a nice healthy slab — well okay, more like a sliver — of high-quality angry Pittsburgh hardcore, courtesy of GIRLFIGHT.
Valley of Steel 